


generations

by ironicpotential, TaFuilLiom



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-18
Updated: 2018-11-18
Packaged: 2019-08-25 12:58:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16661531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ironicpotential/pseuds/ironicpotential, https://archiveofourown.org/users/TaFuilLiom/pseuds/TaFuilLiom
Summary: Her visitors announce themselves with just the scrape of a key in the lock. As she comes to greet Alex and Maggie, their sombre mood permeates the house, like a fog they bring from the outside.





	generations

**Author's Note:**

> Alternative title: 4 times Jamie Sawyer-Danvers was a tiny version of her mothers, and 1 time she was her Aunt Kara
> 
> (Inspired by this tweet: https://twitter.com/comickergirl/status/993145198610804737?s=21 by comickergirl)

 

High above the bay, gulls are circling. Eliza gazes out through the patio doors, watching them hover as she waits. The morning is bright and still, but the quiet is unsettling. 

When even the birds are afraid to make a noise, she knows to expect the worst. 

Her visitors announce themselves with just the scrape of a key in the lock. As she comes to greet Alex and Maggie, their sombre mood permeates the house, like a fog they bring from the outside.  

Still, Eliza welcomes them in, taking her granddaughter from Maggie and hugging her tight. She catches Alex’s eye over the young girl’s soft curls and sees a haunted quality that had been missing for years. 

None of them want to speak, at first. 

Eliza deposits a sluggish Jamie in front of cartoons and moves to the kitchen. For a while, the only noise comes from the creaking of the stairs as Alex ascends and the comic sound effects of the show that Jamie is watching. 

Maggie stands in the doorway, taking in the sight of her daughter in her brand new light-up sneakers. The little girl giggles at a squeaky-voiced one liner and Eliza spies the twitch of a smile on Maggie’s face at the sound. 

Alex reappears holding a stuffed otter plush. Eliza recognizes the toy instantly. She hasn’t seen it in years, but she remembers small fingers pressed up against the glass of an aquarium tank as curious eyes followed the river otters darting through the water. Six year old Alex had been enamoured with the creatures and had begged for the toy in the gift shop. Neither she nor Jeremiah could say no. Alex and Doctor Pickles had been inseparable from that day on. 

Fingertips fidget with velvet ears, the same way they did when Alex was a child. Eliza watches the furrow of her brow, tracing familiar patterns that time and maturity have not erased. 

Then, wordlessly, Alex hands the otter to her wife. She kisses her on the side of her head and slings an arm around Maggie’s waist. They bask in each other’s presence, enjoying just a moment of quiet intimacy before the oncoming storm of whatever danger is coming their way. 

And then it’s over. Maggie holds up the toy in question, and at Alex’s nod she goes into the living room with the stuffed otter. Alex hangs back, coming to join her mother in the kitchen.

She leans up against the kitchen island, attention still trained on her wife and daughter. 

“We’ve gotta go, soon,” she says. 

“I know, sweetie.” 

They both watch Maggie kneel down in front of Jamie, presenting her with the otter. The little girl lights up, taking Doctor Pickles and squeezing him to her chest. Eliza glances at her daughter, seeing Alex’s throat bob with emotion. She has never seen this kind of fear and regret from her.

As an agent, Alex was always happy enough to jump into the fray. But Eliza has watched how being a wife and a mother has changed her, settled her.  Now that she is faced with that same danger again, it seems as if she can’t handle the possibility that her duty may rip her away from her daughter as her father was from her. 

She clears her throat, but her words are still hoarse. “Mom, if we don’t come back…” 

Alex chokes on the end of her sentence and Eliza doesn’t want to imagine how it might have ended. “Please don’t say that.” 

“I don’t want to.” Her knuckles blanche into stark white as she grips the edge of the counter. “But I have to.”

Eliza reaches out and thumbs her daughter’s cheek, feeling a wet tear track. “I’ll take good care of her,” she vows.

Alex’s eyes close, fighting to keep back a flood. Eliza carefully extracts her hands from the grip on the counter and slips in front of her. Then, she cups her daughter’s face. 

“Please don’t come back to me in a coffin, Alexandra,” she whispers. 

She knows she shouldn’t ask, but she’s been through this before. She knows the sacrifices that DEO agents have to make and she’s all too familiar with the toll it takes on their families. 

Alex’s voice comes out a whisper, her lip trembling as she struggles to compose herself. “I’ll try my best, mom.” 

Eliza kisses her on the forehead, keeping the embrace long enough to feel Alex sag bonelessly against her. They sway, silently, mother supporting daughter. Then, Alex draws herself up, wiping at her cheeks before going to join her wife in the living room. 

Alex haunches down in front of Jamie, wrapping an arm around Maggie. They kneel on the carpet, sharing a laugh about something the girl is animatedly telling them. She is pure delight; completely oblivious to her mothers’ apprehension. 

Eliza rubs her palms along her sweater, which retains the warmth of Alex’s embrace, and hopes it won’t be the last.

~

**_Maggie_ **

Once her mothers leave to return to the city, Jamie grows restless, so Eliza sends her out to play in the front yard. 

She quickly makes friends with the little blonde girl next door, and Eliza shakes her head fondly. She remembers Alex being knee-high and bounding across the front lawn in a very similar way.

As much as she was a bookworm, the outdoors always called to her. Jeremiah would often find her stretched out on her stomach underneath the shade of the trees, a new novel in her grip. She would make great company when Eliza would spend glorious summer mornings such as this trimming and cleaning out her flower beds. 

With a faint nostalgia, she takes her pruning shears in hand and heads across the lawn. Basking in the sunshine, she kneels down by one of the garden beds. She keeps a close eye on her granddaughter and with the occasional giggle carrying in the breeze, it isn’t difficult to block out what dangers her daughters might be involved in. No matter how old they get, she’ll always worry. 

After exhausting themselves running around, the girls flop down onto the grass nearby, where Eliza has set out a few juice boxes and some snacks.

“Do you wanna be the good guy or the bad guy?” The little blonde girl pipes up between sips.

“The good guy,” Jamie answers, muffling around the straw of her juice box. 

“Okay!” 

Eliza chuckles at the lack of hesitation in the reponse. In addition to her dimples, Jamie has clearly inherited Maggie’s sense of morality. 

She is still at that age when police officers are heroes with no faults, still sees the world in black and white, right and wrong. Eliza savours these innocent days, before the ugly truths about the world and reality of law enforcement discolours that vision. 

After their snack, the girls skip over to her. Jamie holds out the stuffed otter’s paw towards her grandmother in greeting. 

“This is Officer Pickles.” 

Eliza pulls off her gardening gloves. She takes the paw between her thumb and two forefingers and gives it a gentle shake. 

“Hello, Officer Pickles,” she greets, much the same as she did when they were introduced for the first time by a knee-high Alex. 

It warms her heart to see that young Alex’s favorite lab assistant has found a new home. Alex was always a precocious child— choosing to spend much of her free time in either Jeremiah or Eliza’s lab— taking in new information like a sponge, before running off on her own to set up her own “experiments” in the yard and Doctor Pickles was never far behind. 

Pickles’s new occupation, an officer of the law, is a testament to how much Jamie loves her mothers. They are her heroes, so of course her new otter pal would be a good guy, fighting crime and protecting the innocent. 

Jamie whispers something into Officer Pickles’s ear, then sets him down next to Eliza’s gardening shears. 

“Has he come to help me with the weeding?” she asks, pulling her gloves back on . 

Jamie shakes her head, her soft curls bouncing around her head. She leans in, whispering like it’s a conspiracy. “No. He’s on the lookout.”

Playing along, Eliza drops her voice too. “Oh? Officer Pickles isn’t playing, too?”

“Not yet.” 

Eliza marvels at how seriously the girls take their games as they run off around the other side of the house, giggling to themselves as they go. 

The next time she spots Jamie, she’s wearing a tiny costume cop hat and plastic badge that the girl next door has brought out to her. She chases after the neighbor girl yelling, “ _ Police! _ ” Returning to the soil in front of her, Eliza smirks. 

All that’s missing is the oversized windbreaker. 

~

**_Alex_ **

The sun crawls to the top of the sky, growing a touch too hot for her to work without a hat. 

She stands, wiping the dirt off on her gardening apron, and calls Jamie inside for lunch, but there’s no sign of the girl in the garden. She sets off around the back of the house, but Jamie isn’t in the backyard either. Frowning, she pokes her head over the fence separating the Danvers’ backyard from the neighbors’, where she finds Jamie’s new friend digging in a sandbox. 

“Hello.”

The girl looks up in surprise, pushing her glasses up her nose. “Hello.”

“I’m Jamie’s grandma,” she says, even as she knows the girl probably recognises her from earlier, “Do you know where she went?”

The girl looks at the police cap and badge abandoned beside her, and then goes back to digging. “She went back inside.”

Eliza lets out a sigh of relief at not having lost her granddaughter and heads back towards the house. She leaves her gardening boots at the door and heads into the kitchen to wash her hands. 

“Jamie?” she calls. 

When she enters the kitchen, she finds one of the drawers halfway open and Jamie at the table on her tiptoes trying to affix cellotape to one of Officer Pickles’s seams. 

Eliza watches her struggling, her fingers clumsily sticking in the long stretch of tape. She washes the dirt away and dries her hands before coming to touch Jamie’s shoulder. 

“Sweetie, I don’t think that’s going to work,” she says.

Jamie gives up, her shoulders slumping. Eliza meticulously untangles each of her fingers from the tape, and then scrunches it up into a ball. She sets it aside for the trash, and then takes a look at Officer Pickles. He’s in bad shape, his stomach busted and the stuffing pouring out around him. But as far as Eliza can see, it’s nothing that a needle and thread can’t fix. 

Craning her neck, Jamie looks up at her grandmother. “Did I break him?”

Eliza rubs the young girl’s back and shakes her head. “No sweetie.”

“Is mommy gonna be mad?” Her lower lip trembles, eyes glistening with tears. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to, I swear!”

Eliza can’t imagine that Alex would ever lose her temper over an accident, might even have expected it with the age of the toy, but she seeks to reassure the child that she hasn’t done anything wrong. 

“We can fix him,” she says, “How did he break?”

“He was hurt chasing the bad guys.” 

Eliza goes to the drawer, still lying open, and retrieves her sewing kit. “He’s very brave, isn’t he?”

Jamie nods, wiping at her eyes with her sleeve, and sniffles. 

Eliza sets to work fixing Officer Pickles. As she fumbles to get the thread through the needle’s eye, Jamie strokes the otter’s fur and whispers softly to him. 

“You’re gonna be okay, Officer Pickles.”

After an experiment gone awry, Alex had come crying to Eliza. Due to an accidental spillage, Doctor Pickles’ fur was clumping into white patches across his back. It was a simple case of putting him into a hot wash, but Alex stared intently at each rotation of the washing machine, following dutifully as he also took a spin in the dryer. 

When he came out, she hugged him to her chest. Eliza watched her sniff the sweet fresh scent of detergent from his warm fur and smile up at her with bright gratitude. 

“Alex will understand that he’s been fighting crime.” Eliza carefully pushes the stuffing back into the toy. “She was going to be a doctor, did you know that?”

Jamie gapes in surprise. “Wow!”

Eliza hums, pinching together the edges of the busted seam and beginning her stitches. Jamie shuffles in her own chair, shifting onto her knees for a better view. “When I fell over and cut my knee, mommy cleaned it up for me.” 

“She’s good, isn’t she?”

Jamie nods empathically, and then puts her chin on her hand to watch her grandmother work. The girl’s face is screwed up in concentration as she carefully follows along with each stitch.

She never meant to pressure Alex to be a doctor, but she knows now that her encouragement wasn’t received the way that it was intended. While they rarely spoke when Alex was in medical school, Eliza does remember one conversation very clearly. Alex had complained about See One, Do One, Teach One. She’d railed on its impracticality—  _ how could anyone be expected to perform a surgical procedure after simply observing it? _ — but she had adapted quite well to it in reality. Eliza has seen her careful work at the DEO, and the way she instructs her underlings, and she thinks perhaps it was less of the method and more of the career that was wrong.

Eliza glances at the concentration and the furrow in Jamie’s brow, how she follows every stitch, and suspects that she is the same.

In no time, Officer Pickles is good as new. She cuts the thread and brushes down the fur before handing him over. Jamie curls around him gingerly, hyperaware of how fragile he is now. 

“Thank you,” she says. 

Eliza smiles and nods, clasping her sewing box shut. 

“How would Officer Pickles like some lunch?”

~ 

**_Maggie_ **

Her phone has been pinging with news alerts all day. 

_ “Unidentified Creature Terrorizes Downtown.” _

_ “Two Dead in Carnage at Metro Center.” _

_ “Eleven Injured After Building Collapse.” _

_ “Fatalities After Overpass Crush.” _

Each time she hears the telltale buzzing of a new alert she recites a quick prayer for her daughter and her daughter-in-law, in the hopes that they will be guided home safely. She’s never been terribly religious, but the frequency with which her daughters find themselves in danger have her grasping for the comfort that comes with ancient traditions. 

Sighing at the latest headline, she sets her phone down on the counter and busies herself with chores— anything to keep her mind occupied. She picks up a few errant Lego pieces from the floor, abandoned from an earlier game, and unwinds the cord to the vacuum, plugging it into the wall. She slides it back and forth across the floor, losing herself in the rhythmic humming of the appliance. 

Halfway through the living room, the hairs on the back of her neck stand up as she becomes aware that she’s being watched. She turns to find a curious pair of eyes peeking up over the back of the overstuffed armchair. 

“What’re you doing?” Jamie chirps up in an attempt to be heard over the din. 

“Vaccuming,” Eliza answers, switching off the appliance to better hear her. The vacuum splutters to a stop and she thinks that perhaps it might be time for a new one.

“Why?” 

“Because it keeps the carpets nice and clean.”

Jamie considers that for a moment, head tilted to the side, then nods resolutely, as if she’s figured out a very important puzzle.“That doesn’t look like mommy’s.”

“No. I have a much older model.”

“Oh.” 

Jamie falls silent, seemingly accepting the explanation, and Eliza resolves to finish the task, switching the vacuum back on. As she finishes, wrapping the cord back around the hooks on the machine, her granddaughter approaches shyly. 

“Sometimes I help my mommies,” she says, digging her toe in the carpet. 

“Would you like to help me?” Eliza offers. 

Jamie twists and looks at the armchair, and then raises an eyebrow. “Can Officer Pickles help too?”

Armed with a feather duster and the otter toy, Jamie toddles after her into Jeremiah’s office. She flicks on the lightswitch and watches as Jamie enters, eyes wide, taking in her new surroundings. 

The door to Jeremiah’s office remains closed most days. It’s where her husband spent much of his time, when he wasn’t mapping constellations with Alex or teaching Kara about the animals that lived on her new planet. Eliza often finds the memories too painful to bear. So many important discoveries were written up in this room and she remembers the long nights she would spend at his side, looking over manuscripts. Those were the ones he was most proud of— the papers published under both J. and E. Danvers. 

She places her hand on the smooth wooden desktop and sighs. 

Ever the intrepid explorer, Jamie wanders along the bookshelves that stretch from the ceiling to the floor, her fingers brushing each item. This is the first time she’s been in this particular room in her grandmother’s house and she seems to understand its importance without being told. She catalogues each artifact quietly, picking them up and studying them as she dusts, asking questions along the way. 

The young girl might have buckets of bounding curiosity, but her eyes don’t roam like Alex’s do. Her gaze is precise and focused, like Maggie’s. The intrigue of a scientist with the caution and wariness of a detective.

“What’s this?” she asks.

Eliza finds her holding up the pyramid that Jeremiah brought back for Alex from Egypt. Alex had returned it to her father’s office as if to lay it to rest. She takes it from the girl and rubs at the black hieroglyphs etched onto the smooth, ceramic surface. 

“It’s a pyramid.” She hands it back to Jamie and a smile tugs at the corner of her mouth as the little girl peers closely at it. Someday she hopes that they’ll find her husband again— Alex is always searching— but she knows deep down that he’ll never be the man he was. 

Jamie takes two points of the souvenir between her fingers and spins it around. Eliza’s heart clenches, recognising it as a habit Alex had when she handled the object.

“What’s a…?” Jame struggles to remember the new word, mouthing around it before settling on, “What’s that?”

Eliza kneels down and starts to tell her about the pyramids out in the desert in Egypt. She tells her about Giza, the hot sun, the ancient gods and how it they were so very old. Jamie listens in rapt attention, unwavering with each detail. Eliza could see the ideas forming in her mind, the grit of the sand, the strange time and place, those Gods with animal heads.  

By the time Eliza realises she has lost herself on a tangent, she draws herself back. She feels the ache of her bones, limbs cramping from holding the position for so long, and shifts. 

Jamie’s hands curl around the pyramid, holding it close to her chest. “Can I keep this?”

Eliza pauses for a moment, unsure. She knows the pyramid has sentimental meaning to her daughter— there’s a reason it was placed back on the shelf, rather than tucked away in the attic of the Sawyer-Danvers family’s new house.

“If you ask your mom, maybe,” she relents, “It’s hers, you know.” 

Jamie’s face falls and she moves to place the pyramid back on its shelf, but Eliza stops her, placing a hand on her elbow. “How about you borrow it for tonight?”

Jamie grins down at the pyramid  and runs off to retrieve Officer Pickles from his perch on Jeremiah’s desk. After she has finished her chores, Eliza catches her in the armchair in front of the television. She ignores the cartoons in order to repeat the lessons about Egypt to her fuzzy friend and hopes that someday she’ll get to tell her grandfather everything she’s learned too.

Later still, at dinner, Jamie is watching her cut up mushrooms. She’s not quite tall enough to see over the counter, but the kitchen stool provides the extra height she needs to serve as a sous chef. 

“Wait!”

Eliza pauses, knife raised, half expecting a question about where mushrooms come from or how many different types there were. But instead, Jamie points her little finger at the mushroom she was about to slide to the side.

“You didn’t cut that one the same.” 

She looks down and sees the mushroom only sliced in half. 

“You’re right. I didn’t.” Eliza corrects her mistake, cutting it again. “How many pieces did I cut it into?”

A pause. “Two.”

“And how many should I have cut it into?”

The girl counts under her breath, pointing at her fingers, before declaring, “Four.”

“You don’t miss anything, do you?”

Jamie shakes her head. “My mommy says I know too much.” 

“You can never know too much.” Eliza scrapes all of the mushrooms from the chopping board into the pan sizzling behind her. Jamie watches every motion, and she can’t help but smile. “You could be a detective like your mom, if you wanted to be.” 

Jamie returns the smile, all dimples and teeth, and Eliza knows she’s right. 

Alex has a second Detective Sawyer, now.  __

~

**_Alex_ **

After dinner, Eliza sends Jamie off to clean up and change into her pajamas before bed. She asks if she needs any help, but Jamie refuses because she’s almost  _ five _ . She says it with the utmost seriousness and Eliza can only chuckle because Alex was the same way. So independent, so young, stubborn as a mule. 

She flips on the television to the news and settles down with an older issue of  _ Scientific American  _ she’d never had a chance to read. 

Jamie shuffles back in little bit later in a blue onesie with the feet attached, the zipper stuck part of the way up. She places Officer Pickles up on the couch and then hoists herself up, cuddling him to her chest once she’s settled next to her grandmother. 

Eliza places the magazine back on the side table and gently tugs the fabric from the stuck zipper, pulling it all of the way up. She tucks a tuft of dark wavy hair— cut just at the chin like her mother— behind a small ear. “How’s Officer Pickles feeling now?”

Jamie looks at the toy like he might answer for himself, then says, “I’m giving him lots of cuddles. It’s gonna make him better.”

The little girl squirms on the couch, getting comfortable, and leans into Eliza’s side. She winds an arm around Jamie’s shoulder, pulling her close. “Oh? How will that make him better?”

“Because that’s what happens when I get a cuddle. My mommies say they have magic heaving powers.”

“Do you mean healing powers?”

Jamie scrunches her eyebrows together. “I don’t know…”

Eliza likes the thought of Maggie and Alex teaching affection that way and she’s so proud of her daughter for helping to create such a warm home. She rubs Jamie’s arm with her thumb and hopes that Jamie is able to pull some comfort from her in their absence. 

The weather person drones on about possible rain in the forecast, but is suddenly interrupted by a breaking news alert. Eliza catches a familiar blue and red blur on the screen and immediately moves to shield Jamie’s eyes as she pats around for the remote control. 

“Oh, let’s not watch that.” 

The screen fades to black as she clicks it off entirely. Jamie turns to her, a question in her eyes. “Why can’t we watch it?”

“Because it’s scary,” Eliza explains patiently.

“I can watch scary things!” Jamie hunches her shoulders, pulling away from Eliza and holding Officer Pickles tighter to her chest. “I like scary things!”

“I’m afraid you just aren’t old enough, sweetie.” 

“But I’m brave.” She pouts, her dimples deepening. 

“You are.” Eliza strokes her hair. “But sometimes there are scary things that only grown ups can deal with.”

Jamie sulks, her eyes cast downward in disappointment, but she doesn’t throw a tantrum like other kids. She’s so much like her mother that way, Eliza muses. Alex loved horror as a child, even if the scarier episodes of the Doctor Who she would watch with her father kept her up at night. And even though she had a bit of a temper as a teenager, she was always more broody than combative. 

Jamie huffs and curls up into a ball on the couch, rubbing her cheek against Officer Pickles’s smooth fur. But Eliza has been through this enough times with a Danvers child to know exactly how to get her out of a slump: freshly baked cookies. 

Indeed, Jamie Sawyer-Danvers is no different from Alex in that respect. At the mention of the treat, she’s up from the couch and already halfway across the room towards the kitchen. In her haste for sugar, she abandons Officer Pickles. 

Eliza traces the new stitches on his stomach. 

“I’m sorry, Officer Pickles. Otters can’t have cookies.” 

~

**_Kara_ **

Eliza is up with the sun. 

She always enjoyed the golden hours of the morning, when she could just sit on the second floor balcony with a cup of coffee, enjoying the quiet splendor of the sunrise rippling colour over the ocean. Jeremiah and Alex were always late risers, so the mornings were her time to relax. Now that she lives alone, she finds that while she doesn’t  _ need _ the alone time, the routine provides her with some comfort. 

She hears the rap on the door outside, and heads downstairs, avoiding the third stair from the top, so that the creaking doesn’t wake her granddaughter. Relief washes over her in waves when she sees that Alex and Maggie are on the other side. They limp inside together, Alex leaning on Maggie, whose arm is in a sling. 

She hugs them both tightly, not caring that they’re covered in dust and bruises, their clothes tattered and burned. Dirt can be washed off and clothes can be repaired. All that matters is that her daughters are alive. They’re alive and they’re home.

“I’m so glad you’re safe,” she whispers into Alex’s hair. 

“Me too,” Alex says, the exhaustion dripping from her words. 

Eliza guides them to sit at the bench seat of the kitchen table and pours them both a mug of coffee. She’s not sure when they last ate, but she knows them well enough by now to be sure that breakfast would only be welcomed. 

“I saw the news,” she says, proceeding with caution. If they close down, if they don’t want to speak, she won’t push them. 

“Whole sections of the city are in ruins,” Maggie says quietly. 

“It hasn’t been this bad since the Daxamites,” Alex adds. “And the death toll…”

“There are so many cops lost.” 

Maggie stares down into her mug, regret flashing over her face, and Alex slides a hand over the table to grip her hand. Eliza doesn’t want to say it because it might be disrespectful, but she’s glad Maggie isn’t one of them. 

“Well, you’re both alive.” She cracks some eggs in a bowl, then turns back to Alex. “Your sister?”

“She’s fine, helping with some rescue efforts. She just dropped us off.”

Eliza nods, adding a few more eggs to the bowl to accommodate the appetite of her youngest daughter. 

“She’ll be along soon.” Alex glances at the stairs, in the direction of her old childhood bedroom. “We wanted to get home.”

Eliza’s heart aches for them both. She’s not sure exactly what they saw out in the field, but it has made them extra eager to see their daughter.

“She’s been very well behaved.” Eliza pours the beaten eggs into a pan, shifting them around with a spatula. She considers them for a moment, then pulls another bowl from the cabinet, along with a box of pancake mix. She has been cooking fairly healthy breakfasts, much to Jamie’s chagrin, but she thinks perhaps the safe return of her family is cause for celebration. “I think she’ll be happy to see you.”

As if on cue, tiny footfalls come down the stairs and Jamie appears in the doorway, rubbing one eye, Officer Pickles trailing behind. Her eyes widen when she catches sight of her moms and she squeals happily, ignoring their obvious appearance to launch herself at them. If Maggie’s injured arm gets in the way, she doesn’t complain, holding Jamie as if she doesn’t want to let go. 

Alex slides over on the bench seat to make room for her daughter to sit in between them, and the little girl immediately starts babbling about all of her adventures, her legs swinging back and forth. 

Eliza smiles and continues cooking breakfast as Alex and Maggie take turns asking questions. She has always thought that they made a great team. The day Alex introduced her girlfriend to her, Eliza knew instantly that they were two sides of the same coin, but now that they’re married, they’re a seamless pair— able to communicate volumes in just a glance. They’ve created a loving family unit and Eliza couldn’t be more proud, because even though they are both clearly injured, all of their attention is focused on their daughter. 

“What happened to your arm?” Jamie asks, pointing at Maggie’s sling.

“I fell and got hurt. But I’ll be okay.” 

Behind Jamie’s head, Eliza sees the flinch of Alex’s face, and knows the euphemism shields an experience that must have come much too close to the unspeakable.

In another moment when Jamie is distracted, Eliza notices Maggie reaching over with her good hand and catching Alex’s, giving it a squeeze and buoying her again. The gesture is simple, but it says everything.  _ We made it. I love you both. I’m so happy to be home. _

Alex has always been the kind of person that throws herself into line of fire to protect those she loves, and Eliza has come to realize that Maggie is very similar in that respect. But having a daughter has changed them both. She first noticed it when they first agreed to start looking into having a family, but it’s even more evident now. She remembers the triumph and glee that radiated off of them after the Daxamite Invasion all those years ago. Freshly engaged and commendated by the President, they had practically celebrated the end of the invasion. But those emotions are gone now, replaced with a quiet relief and exhaustion. 

There’s a maturity that has settled about them that Eliza has seen only hints of before, and she thinks it’s only a matter of time before they remove themselves from the field entirely. 

“Officer Pickles was so brave!” Jamie chirps excitedly, pulling Eliza out of her thoughts. 

“Oh yeah?” As tired as she must be, Alex is all ears as she beams down at Jamie and her stuffed partner.

“Did he read the bad guys their rights?” Maggie asks, shifting her injured arm.

“He did!”

“He’ll make a great cop.” Maggie swells with pride, her own dimples matching that of her daughters. 

There’s a soft  _ whump  _ as Kara lands outside on the patio, and Eliza is already fixing her a plate by the time she joins her family in the kitchen. There’s a hole in her cape and a few soot marks on her face, but she’s otherwise unharmed, and Eliza can finally breathe a sigh of relief as the weight she’s been carrying the past few days is lifted. 

Alex rolls her eyes fondly. “Straight to where the food is.”

Kara sticks her tongue out at her sister and sits down across from her niece. 

“Hi Supergirl,” Jamie bleats, before turning her attention back to the story she was telling. 

While she doesn’t know the truth about her Aunt Kara, she is already acclimatised around Supergirl. Eliza sets a plate in front of Jamie, Alex and Kara, and they tuck into breakfast. Maggie murmurs her gratitude when Eliza sets her plate down, the pancakes already cut so that she doesn’t have to struggle with her sling. 

Kara and Jamie scoff down pancakes covered in syrup, while Alex and Maggie take their time, sharing glances as if they want to constantly make sure they’re still there.  

Sandwiched between her parents, Jamie doesn’t care how dirty or weary Alex, Maggie and Kara are. She’s not old enough to recognize the ghosts in their faces or to see that she’s the light that shines in their darkest moments. She’s just thrilled to have her parents by her side. 

Jamie accidentally drops Officer Pickles under the table, and she crawls down to get him. Kara winks at Alex and steals the remainder of the blueberries from Jamie’s plate. She stuffs them in her mouth and chews rapidly. By the time the girl pops back up, Kara has an innocent expression on her face. 

Propping Officer Pickles up again, Jamie scowls at her plate. “Hey!”

“What?” Maggie asks, amused. 

“Who ate my berries?”

It was a clever trick Maggie and Alex played to encourage Jamie to eat her vegetables and fruit. They would steal some, or pretend that they were going to, and suddenly the girl was much more interested in finishing what was on her plate. 

“I think it was Officer Pickles,” Kara says. 

“I saw him run away under the table with them,” Alex agrees. 

Jamie looks at the toy, truly scandalised. “Officer Pickles, no! Cops don’t steal!” 

Maggie smirks. “We’re supposed to catch the robbers, right?”

Eliza shakes her head at the group. She looks at the pancake mix, realises she may as well finish it up.  

“Who wants more pancakes?”

She isn’t sure whether it’s Jamie or Kara’s hand that is in the air first, but one thing is clear. 

Alex and Maggie may be Jamie's parents, but she has inherited her appetite from Supergirl.

**Author's Note:**

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